Hospitals face pressure to link procurement with clinical performance amid new accreditation standards

Hospitals must integrate clinical performance metrics into purchasing strategies as The Joint Commission’s updated accreditation goals make supplier selection critical for patient safety and regulatory standing, according to Vizient.

Hospitals must more tightly link purchasing choices with clinical performance or face risks to patient safety and regulatory standing, according to a Feb. 24 piece by Vizient reproduced on Becker’s Hospital Review.

The warnin...

g follows a shift in accreditation focus by The Joint Commission. Effective January 1, 2026, the body replaced its National Patient Safety Goals with 14 National Performance Goals aimed at measurable outcomes across patient safety, infection control and health equity, a change that raises the stakes for how organisations justify the products and services they buy. According to the Joint Commission, the new framework includes explicit requirements such as ensuring the right patient receives the right care at the right time, closing disparities in outcomes and maintaining an adequately skilled and responsive workforce.

Vizient argues that procurement can no longer be treated as a back-office cost exercise detached from clinical priorities. “For healthcare leaders, this means procurement strategy is now inseparable from performance strategy,” Vizient said, “and organizations that don’t prioritize this shift risk patient harm and loss of accreditation.” The company urges health systems to treat supplier selection and product specification as instruments of clinical quality improvement rather than only financial optimisation.

To operationalise that view, Vizient lays out practical steps for sourcing teams. It advises embedding clinical reliability and error-mitigation features into requests for proposals, assessing designs that reduce infection risk and environmental contributors to harm, and evaluating devices and supplies for usability, accessibility and patient communication. Vizient also recommends partnering with vendors whose products and practices align with an organisation’s clinical and operational aims.

Those recommendations map directly to several Joint Commission goals. National Performance Goal #1, focused on ensuring the right patient receives the right care, places emphasis on reliable identification, hand-offs and timely reporting, areas where product design and clinical workflows intersect. Goal #4, which centres on equitable outcomes, requires organisations to stratify data and act to close disparities,a process that can be hindered or helped by supply choices that affect access, usability and patient engagement. Goal #12 highlights workforce planning and skill mix, reinforcing the need for supplies and equipment that support clinicians’ ability to deliver safe care.

Industry leaders and health systems have already begun bridging clinical and supply-chain functions through joint committees, co-developed specifications and pilot testing at the point of care. According to Vizient, the Joint Commission’s performance-oriented approach accelerates those efforts and makes cross-disciplinary governance a regulatory as well as an operational imperative.

Putting procurement decisions through a clinical-quality lens will require changes to sourcing timelines, evaluation criteria and supplier relationships. The shift also implies that finance teams must accept that some choices prioritise outcome improvement over short-term savings. As regulators move to judge hospitals by measurable performance results rather than process checklists, organisations that fail to align buying with the goals driving accreditation may find themselves exposed both clinically and financially.

Source: Noah Wire Services